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So… what is it with rape culture and Julian Assange that brings all the level-1-trolls and wannabe-witty fauxminists out of the woods? The Assange case has been debated for a long time now, and still, the same “arguments” are evoked over and over again, no matter how many times they have been refuted – it’s not like any of Assange’s defenders (as in: either saying the women are lying and are honeytrapping CIA-spies, or that if there was a rape it wasn’t all that bad, or that this is all a plot by The International Policy Conspiracy to get him executed) have any new clues or epiphanies to share. The enthusiasm for Assange coming from many fuzzy Pirate Party edges could somewhat be expected; the half-ass trolling from alleged progressive or even feminist (don’t know if the ones I am talking about claim that term, though) women was not, at least to this extent – although I should have known better, given the delightful insights Naomi Wolf has shared already.

People who have followed the “debate” on the “Mädchenmannschaft” blog post on the Pirate Party, Spackeria, Rainer Langhans and his donation to Assange’s defense funds, know who I am talking about in particular (yes, journalist and blogger Julia Seeliger – and yesterday was the last day I talked to her directly, and today will be the last I talk about her), but this behaviour is nothing new and nothing too exciting in terms of trollfeminism – it is rather a good example of a classic tale.

Because the “conversation” between Julia, others and I was, quite frankly, both absurd and triggering [and obviously, a TW is in order here for rape apologism following], it has been deleted in part. People then resorted to Twitter to continue virtually yelling at each other, which was both fun and exasperating, because I would have thought that people who are invested and also known for journalistic excursions into leftist and gender politics would know a couple of things about it and not stomp their feet, start mocking others and projecting every possible, boring cliché about feminists onto those who dare criticize their views. Oh, how wrong I was…

Whereas the thread on Mädchenmannschaft was actually talking about Rainer Langhans, certain associations of germany’s Pirate Party and the (I maintain that) closely related “Spackeria”, it basically got derailed into the above mentioned “discussion” whether Assange’s case is true or false and whether rape culture is stupid or not. Yeah, that’s right.

Julia started out criticizing that Julian Assange was being made into the poster boy of rape culture, and if we were determined to do that, we should also include other men in that definition, because incidents like the ones Assange is accused of would happen every day and would necessitate talking about uncomfortable issues, e.g., condom use. Whereas she deems it appropriate that the women pressed charges against Assange, the European warrant for his arrest was highly unusual.

Having been criticized for, well, that (her misinformation, the fact that people talk about rape culture all the time and most frequently without Assange as the go-to-guy, the fact that she is reproducing some of his defenders’ strategies and outright lies, etc.) and also informed that the charges against Assange not “only” include the missing condoms but penetration of the sleeping women and using his body weight to hold them down, Julia then resorts to calling the Assange case “highly subjective”, since he was a dude who merely doesn’t like condoms, and that there are many other cases where the issue is much clearer and the charges more justified than with what allegedly happened to the women with Assange, namely – wait for it… – “sleepy sex.”

In her opinion, rape culture equates sex with sexual assault, so “you people” are taking all the fun out of things and are actually “raping Foucault” (she told me that on Twitter after saying that she now has to leave to have some burgers, and she hopes that I’m “also a vegan”, wink wink, smile smile, CAPS LOCK, heart sign heart sign, and that she “invented troll feminism, honey”) and are actually bathing in all the self-pity of female victimhood, since it “frees women” of the “responsibility to take charge” in bed.

Le Sigh…

Is anyone provoked into a blind rage yet or somehow personally hurt? Because I think she and others who argue along those lines are stuck somewhere between amusing and pathetic. The “you people” are “raping Foucault”, “I hope you’re also a vegan” who will now lose it because of the beef, the “you’re all just whiny hippies” and “I invented troll feminism, honey” are very, very subtle attempts to invoke an emotional reaction and a textbook example for projecting your ideas about humorless, frigid (and mostly also fat and ugly) feminists onto the person who criticizes you for your political positioning. Booooring…! Despite popular belief, troll feminism is not an art, it’s old. It’s pointless, it’s telling, and it’s very obviously showcasing the fact that you troll because you have no substantial arguments to make and/or cannot argue properly against those of others. Also: the combination of cluelessness, arrogance and lazy self-centredness you’re portraying makes you look like the dumbass you are. I urge you to stop talking, roll around in glitter and dance for me instead (to paraphrase Sheelzebub).

That people still confuse sex with sexual assault, consent with “I wanted you/have said yes before, so this consent is given for all eternity, no matter what state I am in” and the qualification, sometimes outright encouragement of rape with “daily sex”, is something I cannot be bothered to get into anymore. I expect people who think they can take part in feminist debates to have at least some basic knowledge of Feminism 101, concepts of rape culture and enthusiastic consent, and, you know – basic human decency.

Because this is what baffles me slightly: even if you believe that rape culture is an exaggeration or invention by fun loathing misandrists who never get laid and hate orgasms, the thought of qualifying women’s experiences with sexual assault is an entirely different stage. I really wonder how the people who think that it is common and more or less not a big deal to penetrate someone while that person is unconscious (i.e., the “sleepy sex” Assange is accused of…), to not use a condom when consent is expressively tied to it, to hold someone down during sex so they cannot escape, and to not, you know, stop when someone tells you to stop, actually have sex? From ‘common’ (as in: non-violent and consenting, albeit maybe not enthusiastically consenting) sexual experiences – how can you actually think this is “normal” behaviour, if you also define yourself as not explicitly misogynist and a violent asshole? Relationships and sex are also about negotiations to a certain extent, yes. But in what universe do you penetrate a sleeping person who cannot consent, if you are not a rapist who is very well aware of what s/he is doing and are actually repeatedly on the lookout for certain “opportunity structures”? Moreover, if you feel so inclined to smash feminism for its alleged misandry, in what universe do you equate these types of behaviour of dominance and power and humiliation of others to *male (hetero?-)sexuality as a whole, thereby both justifying it and accusing all men of not being able to keep it in their pants, because biology?

Apparently, you missed the memo. I am sorry about that. But we cannot start at point zero every couple of weeks and every time people feel the need to shout a little about things they can neither fathom nor comprehend on the most basic level, only to make people look at them and, ideally, clutch their pearls. And no, this is not about Doing Feminism Wrong, diverse theoretical/practical approaches or even tone. This is about the mere fucking basics of patriarchy/kyriarchy, axes of domination, slut shaming and victim blaming you still don’t got down.

Maybe you can start with the links provided, and, maybe, see you again in a couple of months. Also, you should probably refrain from writing about gender issues and related things until you know what you are talking about. Best of luck!

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6 Responses to ““Fauxminists”, Season 2”

I … kinda missed that whole thing, except for your last post on rum and this one and, erm. I just have to ask – can I possibly be the only one that has serious issues with the name of “Sp*ckeria”, to the point, that, like, I won’t spell the word? I’m not personally concerned, inasmuch as I don’t have that condition, but … is there anything I’m missing? I wanted to read the Mädchenmannschaft thread, one last time ^^, because obviously you were commenting there – and then I just saw that word flashing up again and again, and they have a twitter account that one of my followers now follows, and – I just didn’t know what to think. Maybe I’m just misunderstanding something? (wait … no way in hell, right? That’s just the kind of “fun” thing they’d call themselves.)

The name made pause, too. However, it is different from the ableist word “Sp*st”, and I am not sure how the term originated, if it is a mere spin-off of the former or how people exactly define it. From my experience, it is a juvenile word to refer to stupid people. On their homepage, the Spackeria writes:

yeah, I just googled for a while, too – I still hold it’s extremely ableist. I’ve always understood that term to be a slur meaning “Spastiker_in”, and I’ve quite recently met another person who also thought that (and was epileptic hirself) – which means it is known in an ableist way, though there may be regional differences: I’m from Bavaria. So, even if it means something else for some people, and maybe it’s not intended, that doesn’t change it for those who know/use it in the ableist way. (But then, I don’t like “stupid” as a slur, either, for ableism reasons, and I don’t like hipster *isms … but I guess I just don’t like the whole of it, pirates and “post-gender” included. ^^)

Well, as we use this term to refer to us in a positive way it seem’s strange to me to claim the name is ableist. The normal use for this word is to claim that somebody is just stupid or thumb, as far as I know. I admit that the name isn’t quite smart, but the group already had this name at the time, I started to hang around in the irc and publish on the blog.
(And most of us really aren’t pirates, most pirates reject our ideas and thoughts. And not all pirates like this strange “post-gender” thing. *sigh* but that’s just the fast stamp you get when you are interested in politics&society and also in IT.)

As it maybe didn’t come to your attention I also wanted to remark that we canceled the keynote with Langhans after the discussions emerged from the Mädchenmannschaft post and some people in our irc.

Hey acid,
well… the name thing is controversial – I understand the criticism, I am not quite sure myself, but, honestly, it is the least of the problems with “Spackeria” at the moment (except that I cannot help but briefly mention that to say that the name is not your fault is… not an argument). But, to address the rest of your post:

1. At least four of the six members of your “Spackeria” organizing committee are card-carrying “Pirates”.

2. One of them (Christian Heller, himself allegedly not one) admitted on the Mädchenmannschaft thread (after first “skillfully” rejecting the claim that “Spackeria” and the Pirates are somewhat related…) that most of the people involved in “Spackeria” are members of the Pirate Party.

3. If you feel like not all of you are as “post-gender” (and “post-race”?) as many of you claim, then maybe it is time to do something about it…?

4. You did not reject Langhans because you took the various criticisms about his fascist-magazine interviews, sexism and rape apologism seriously. On your homepage, you state that you dropped him as your key note speaker because you could not handle the debate around this issue anymore…

5. I basically don’t give a flying fuck about “Spackeria” as a (non)progressive group. Reject the Pirate label or embrace it, I don’t care. This post is about the specific problems of fauxminism, rape culture, rape apologism and victim blaming. There is a different post (“Why Is The Rum Gone?”) on an entire movement of and around the so-called “Pirates” (therefore, I resorted to the not extremely useful, but somewhat still adequate term “fuzzy edges”, and the behaviour of “Spackeria” fits the picture very well, actually).

Now, I’d rather discuss the actual problems mentioned in the post (…and will delete further derailing comments) – thanks.

Hey accalmie,
thank you for your answer. I don’t intended to derail an discussion with already left the topic of your post in my perception. I just wanted to add my point of view and thank you for letting me do this.